Chapter 23

The next day we drove south, to just above Hackberry Pass, where we parked at the side of the road and locked the Blazer. At the camp we never locked up, nor if we were parked for just a bit, but on we were going to be away from the Blazer for a while and so we did. None of the people who lived out there would steal anything, but there are people from elsewhere who just might, and anyway there's no sense in tempting honest people.

We crossed to the eastern side of the road, our backpacks in place, and began walking. It was hard to see if you didn't know what to look for, but there's a small canyon that cuts into the Vontrigger Hills, and we were headed for the upper end of it. I'd walked it many times when I was young, and climbed all over the hills around it. I didn't plan on climbing today – I'm still in pretty fair shape, but there are things I could do at 15 that I can't do now, and things I still can do but know better now.

At its head the canyon is just a gully, not more than a few inches wide. I stepped over it, smiling, and told Darlia, "Let's see if I can do that when we get to the bottom."

"You can't, Daddy – I remember you did that last year."

"And the year before, and the year before ... how many years back do you wish me to remember, Darvin?" Cecelia's smile showed her white teeth.

"Well, not so far back that I begin to look dumb."

"It's far too late for that, my husband. So I suppose I shall have to remember all the way back to the day we met."

"I was dumb then," I said, leading us off down the gully, which was so narrow that we walked beside it rather than in it. "Have I ever told you, 'Lia, what I thought of your Mommy the first time I saw her?"

"I think so, but tell me again."

I took Cecelia's hand in mine – my left to her right. We wouldn't be able to walk that way long, for we'd have to dodge brush and cacti, but I loved it. "The first time I met Mommy, I loved her clothes – and thought she was just plain ugly. I thought she was skinny, and bony, and I thought her face was mean."

"And then you changed your mind."

"Yeah." I looked at my wife, who is certainly skinny, but muscular rather than bony, and whose face, though it can be harsh and severe, is usually serene, as it was now. "I got to know her, and found out that she wasn't ugly at all. I realized she's the most beautiful woman on earth, and she's pretty nice too."

"She's the bestest Mommy in the world!"

"I bet she is. I know she's the best wife in the world."

"And you, Darvin," Cecelia said, "are the clumsiest flatterer in the world – but I will accept you in lieu of anything better, for it is you I love, and in any event your sincerity is indubitable." She turned to Darlia, who was at her left. "Have I ever told you what I thought of your father the day we met?"

"Yeah, but tell me again!"

We split up to dodge a big cholla, its trunk two or three inches in diameter at the base. When we came back together, Cecelia said, "He dressed like a drugstore cowboy, he talked like a buffoon, and the only good point I could see in him was his courtesy – and there are courteous people who would still, if they thought they could get away with it, burn a cross in our front yard. But I also came to realize that he has a fine mind, which he hides behind his lean-witted façade, and that he was, in fact, neither as crude nor as stupid as he appeared. Your father has a great talent for hiding himself behind a mask."

"I ain't too sure that's true, C. I think it's more like I just don't bother pretending to be anything besides what I am."

"I believe you're correct; I misspoke." She turned back to Darlia. "Your father is right – he likes informal English, so he speaks informal English; he makes no pretense to enjoying words as I do. He likes the clothes he wears, so he wears them, rather than seeking to make an impression. And as you and I both know, Darlia, your father is quite intelligent, and dogged in the pursuit of truth, and – as I observed that first day – innately courteous."

"I don't know about 'innately, '" I said. "Tony and Anna pounded good manners into me with a paddle."

"That is much the same avenue by which I learned my courtesy – except that Daddy would send me out to cut a switch."

I grinned. "And what if you deliberately cut one that wouldn't hurt so much?"

"He would go out with me, and together we would find the perfect switch, and then I would receive double strokes – first for my original misdeed, and second for my attempt to dodge the consequences of my action."

"I never had to cut a switch," Darlia said. Her voice was raspier this morning than usual – sometimes the throatiness increases, and sometimes it decreases, without any pattern that I can ever see.

"No, but I've whopped you a few times, ain't I?"

"Yes, Daddy, when I'm bad."

"And that, honey, is seldom; you are a markedly well-behaved child."

"Daddy, is Mommy talking to me like I'm a grownup again?"

I grinned at Cecelia, whose own grin let me know she'd done it on purpose, and then at Darlia. "Yeah, Weightlifter. So you'd better hurry up and grow up so you can talk back to Mommy the same way."

By now the gully was a gully in earnest, and we stepped down onto the sandy bed. It would be harder walking in the loose sand, but easier to stay together, for there wouldn't be anything to go around. The hills were right in front of us, and in a few minutes we were among them, the rock walls beginning to rise on either side. It was odd, a gully starting on the north side and flowing through the hills, turning into a canyon and then flowing out of them on the southern side as a larger gully. All I could figure was that the little rise where the gully started had sent the stream south, and there'd been a crack of some sort that led through the hills into Fenner Valley. It would take a long time to carve out the canyon, given the rarity of rain, but then the desert's been there a long time ... though I read somewhere once that the Mojave Desert once was part of the ocean. That must have been before the western mountains rose up, hemming off eastern California and drying the place out with a vengeance.